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"According to a 2004 study, art collectors share a large number of personality traits with artists. Both groups exhibit creative thinking patterns and are much more open to new experiences than the population at large. During Armory Week, which is a competitive time for collectors \u2014 there are serious negotiations to be done and artworks to fight for \u2014 it\u2019s easy to forget that many of these deep-pocketed art enthusiasts are just as colorful as the artists they collect. ARTINFO has rounded up a group of 10 art collectors whose personalities do as much to guide their art collecting as their bank accounts. If you see any of these faces wandering around the fair this week, make sure to pay careful attention to the art they admire \u2014 it just might become the next big thing.&amp;nbsp;Adam LindemannPerhaps the most polarizing collector in the art world, Lindemann isn\u2019t afraid to let his opinions (and his purchases) be known. As a columnist for the New York Observer, he has railed against everything from MoMA\u2019s beloved de Kooning retrospective&amp;nbsp; (\u201Cthe show is 90 percent predictable and formulaic\u201D) to Art Basel Miami Beach (\u201CI\u2019ve seen enough art-fair art\u201D). Critic Jerry Saltz dismissed the latter screed as \u201Cpuerile pomposity\u201D after Lindemann was spotted at the fair, which he had promised not to attend. But it\u2019s possible the collector had the last laugh: the stunt was outrageous enough to land him a headline in New York Magazine. Now let\u2019s see what he does at the Armory.&amp;nbsp;Jean PigozziElton John once called Pigozzi \u201Cone of the world\u2019s greatest characters.\u201D The automotive heir is as famous for his eccentricities as for his sharp eye, and both helped him acquire what is perhaps the world\u2019s foremost private collection of contemporary African art. A Renaissance man, Pigozzi is a Gagosian-repped photographer as well as a clothing designer. He was inspired to launch his own line, LimoLand, after too many unsuccessful efforts to find clothes for his large frame. It\u2019s hard to find a trace of class anxiety in Pigozzi\u2019s flashy art collection, or any other aspect of his life. The original tagline of his clothing line? \u201CStreet Wear for Rich Old Men.\u201D Its signature print, \u201Cthe Hedge fund,\u201D is comprised of symbols of various global currencies.&amp;nbsp;Basma Al-SulaimanYou have to hand it to a collector who is so cutting-edge that she opens a museum in cyberspace. This Jeddah-born art lover\u2019s private collection venue (called the Basma Al-Sulaiman Museum of Contemporary Art, or BASMOCA) is a 3D cybermuseum situated in a Saudi-like landscape created entirely through Virtual Worlds Technology. As chief curator and director, al-Sulaiman, who also curated Edge of Arabia\u2019s 2010 exhibition in Istanbul, showcases the work of contemporary Saudi and Gulf artists such as Abdulnasser Gharem and Raja Alem alongside that of international art stars. Any collector who helps her artists go viral is just fine in our book.&amp;nbsp;Don and Mera RubellThe Miami-based collector and hotelier couple have been widely credited with elevating the Miami Beach art scene with their private museum, the Rubell Family Collection. Often spotted zipping in and out of studios in cities across the country, they are now getting serious about expanding their influence in Washington, D.C. (They hosted the capitol city\u2019s debut (e)merge art fair and organized \u201C30 Americans,\u201D an exhibition of work by African American&amp;nbsp;artists in their collection, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.) Unafraid to be a bit wacky \u2014 Mera is rarely seen out and about without a rock star-worthy wig \u2014 the duo seems bent on making their art accessible to all, regardless of what the sometimes-insular art world has to say.Marc and Jos\u00E9e GensollensThe 62-year-old couple from Marseilles, both psychiatrists, may not have outrageous personalities, but their collecting habits are quite out of the ordinary. Pioneers in the field of conceptual art collecting, they own a Tino Sehgal piece that involves a museum guard slowly removing every shred of his clothes. (Since there are no guards in the Gensollens\u2019s home, the work is only realized when \u201Clent\u201D to a museum.) \u201CAccumulating fancy goods is absurd,\u201D Marc told the Daily Beast. \u201CWe buy works to talk about them.\u201DAndrew J. HallFew collectors would go to court in order to earn the rights to show off&amp;nbsp;a work from their own collection, but that\u2019s just what commodities trader Andrew J. Hall did. He is famous in his Connecticut town for entering into a four-year legal battle with his neighbors in order to place the 80-foot-long concrete sculpture \u201CEtroits sont les Vaisseaux,\u201D by Anselm Kiefer, on his front lawn. (He lost, and lent the piece to Mass MoCA instead.) The rest of his estimated $100 million art collection is displayed at his second home, which is, we kid you not, a 1,000-year-old castle in Germany.&amp;nbsp;David WalshDavid Walsh may have founded the only private collection museum with a full bar in the lobby. The Australian gambling millionaire opened his Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania last year, and filled it with eccentric finds ranging from Australian modernist paintings and antiquities to Wim Delvoye\u2019s \u201CCloaca,\u201D a machine that simulates the human digestive process and produces a substance indistinguishable from human excrement.&amp;nbsp;Yang BinOne of China\u2019s most successful car salesmen, Bin is also one of the nation\u2019s most well-known tastemakers, scooping up works by contemporary Chinese artists like Chen Yifei and Zhang Xiaogang. Yang claims to own more than 1,000 works of art, though if that doesn\u2019t indicate he\u2019s a bit of a collect-a-holic, this might: According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, he sold one of his Toyota franchises to fuel his art buying. Oh, and he spent all of the $3.6 million profit on new artworks within weeks of the sale.Richard HarrisMany collectors strive to create focused collections, but Harris\u2019s is far narrower than most. The Chicago-based collector has amassed 1,500 works of art, all focused on the subject of death. From works by Rembrandt and Durer to photographs from a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration to a chandelier made of plaster bones, Harris\u2019s collection explores death from multiple perspectives. Those with a taste for the morbid can check out some of his art at the Chicago Cultural Center, where the exhibition \u201CMorbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection\u201D is on display through June.John WatersThis last one might be cheating since everyone already knows Waters is a bit eccentric (his breakthrough film did, after all, feature a singing anus). But the filmmaker, artist, and actor (who was on the jury for the 2011 Venice Biennale) also has some wacky taste on art. In addition to his collection of fake food, prominently on display on tabletops throughout his home, Waters owns a painting of the Wicked Witch from \u201CSnow White\u201D by the serial child killer John Wayne Gracy (it was a gift) and a site specific installation by Gregory Green that portrays the imagined room of a bomber (it was commissioned). It includes an envelope of pubic hair, a hot glue gun, tools, and bits of metal (\u201CEverything you need to build a bomb except gunpowder,\u201D Waters explained.) The multitalented Waters is indeed a collector at heart. Spotted entering the Armory Show yesterday, he told ARTINFO,  I'm just here as a regular fairgoer. &amp;nbsp;To see pictures of our colorful collectors, click on the slide show.[content:shareblock]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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